Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/140

 Workhouse Infirmary Association; before that time, ignorant pauper women had, with deplorable results, acted as nurses to the poor patients. It was largely due to Miss Twining that the Local Government Board appointed the first woman Poor Law Inspector in 1871. Amid all her other activities she found time to write forty tracts and pamphlets for the guidance of those who would, she hoped, follow in the way she had taken, and advance the cause of the poor by serving them as their Guardians.

One of the most useful works to which women can turn their attention is education and the education system. Women in Scotland are eligible to serve on School Boards. Miss Flora Stevenson was the woman chairman of the Edinburgh School Board, and her name is affectionately remembered by her fellow-citizens for the work she accomplished. Councillor Margaret Ashton, member of the Manchester City Council, is one of the most effective and devoted members of any public body. Her chief concern is education. She is a woman of great gifts and widest sympathies, and the special interests of women and girls always command her undivided attention. She is actively interested, too, in the provision of municipal lodging-houses for women, the housing of the poor, and the payment to municipal women servants of a living wage.